Some people argue this is the greatest Broadway musical. That's open to debate. But there is no dispute that Arthur Laurents's book, Jule Styne's music and Stephen Sondheim's lyrics are all first-rate. This 1959 show is now rarely seen in Britain – which makes Paul Kerryson's magnificent revival all the more exciting.

What Kerryson has grasped is the show's ambivalence towards its heroine, Rose. She is the ultimate showbiz mum determined to achieve fame through others: first she steers her daughter, June, round the vaudeville circuit of the 1920s and 30s; when June defects, Rose turns her other daughter, Louise, into a burlesque stripper. In Caroline O'Connor's fine performance, you get to see all aspects of Rose. There is something initially comic about this bustling opportunist who bullies managements into booking "baby June". But O'Connor also lets us see the monstrous side of a woman ready to sacrifice her children, and her own last hope of marital happiness, to the chimera of stardom. O'Connor makes it abundantly clear that, by the time she sings Rose's Turn on a deserted stage, this is a woman in the throes of a nervous breakdown.

O'Connor's barnstorming performance is admirably balanced by the bulky decency David Fleeshman brings to the role of her devoted companion, Herbie. Victoria Hamilton-Barritt also triumphantly pulls off Louise's transformation from a gauche teenager into a skilful stripper. And Kerryson's production is a perfectly calibrated machine, yet never dehumanised. I especially liked Sara Perks's designs, which evoke the American past through monochrome magazine ads. Maybe in its final seconds, the show succumbs to conventional sentiment, but in its wit, tunefulness and portrait of the toxic nature of star-worship, this is a tremendous musical. If I were a producer, I would unhesitatingly import Kerryson's production to London, which has not seen Gypsy in 40 years.